Just lovin’ Walt & co! One of the best concerts I’ve ever seen on video is Tom Waits at Austin City Limits. And that’s available online in very good definition.
Sadly this video isn’t great, in terms of graphics. The definition is rather poor! But the music? That’s a whole ‘nother Turkey shoot. Fabulous.
Setlist:
Shine On
Honest Papas Love Their Mamas Better
Don’t You Know
Seat of Logic
Green Tree
Getaway
For The First Time
Snowing Me Under
Sitting On Top Of The World
I wonder if this is available anywhere in better definition? Such beautiful music deserves better. Still, that said, I’m terrifically grateful to the person who shared this VHS recording.
Wonderful stuff!
And if, like me, you just can’t get enough of this good stuff, you’ll dig the above video. An hour long live recording of the dudes, from 1975.
Tillman Hall, 26/2/‘75
1. Seat of Logic
2. Billy Goat Hop
3. Your Tender Kiss
4. Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ (Sweetheart of Mine)
5. Every Road I Pass
6. Getaway
7. The Spittoon
8. Don’t You Think I Feel It Too
9. In the Night
10. Beauty in the Flesh
11. Aloha
12. Amethyst (Walter’s solo spotlight)
13. Bach guitar piece (Champ’s solo spotlight)
14. Brisk Young Widow (David’s solo spotlight)
15. Under the Boardwalk
16. As the Crow Flies
17. Whatever Reason
18. Dish Wiped Clean
19. Sittin’ on Top of The World
20. Undecided
The venue for the latter concert recording is, alas, named for Benjamin Tillman, a white supremacist. I wonder what he’d have made of these three white boys playing ‘Under The Boardwalk’?
Indeed, I heard David Ball saying, in an interview (Patrick Scott Armstrong, Lone Star Plate?) that when he’d mentioned liking ‘Hot Fun In The Summertime’, by Sly & The Family Stone, Walter and Champ learned it, and the group played it live several times.
They play plenty of blues (not so much on this gig tho’), and plenty of what was once called ‘race music’, in the US of A. And if Ben Tillman saw this (below), he’d be spinning in his grave so hard he’d drill his racist ass straight to Hell:
Now that makes these cats the kind of good ol’ southern boys I can really get behind.